That subject line really has no direct relevance–I just felt like quoting Liza Minelli.

Moving right along, the luster of NYC hasn’t faded in the past week, and I’m still so ready to move there I can’t even express it. What a city!

I hit the ground with no sleep, having taken a red eye, and zoomed straight out the gate to the Hearst Building, where they took finger prints, a retinal scan and a DNA sample before letting me up 1, 108, 214 stories on the world’s most confusing elevator to meet w/Cosmo and Marie Claire.

Then met a friend (she is a Brides editor, but somehow we get along) at Stone Rose Lounge for a quietly gossipy cocktail surrounded by suits. On the dot of 7 she went buzzing off to a dinner while I found my way to CraftBar, where two rowdy drunken PR chicks awaited me.

I had invited my friend Carlton, but he was DAMN LATE, and was texting me requests like: Order me a glass of wine, say it’s for your imaginary friend. I ended up ordering him wine, an appetizer and dinner, much like I was his wife. (Actually all my interactions w/Carlton thus far have made me feel as though I was his wife…which is extra strange considering we’ve only met twice.)

From CraftBar it was off to Gramercy Tavern, and thence on an insane walkabout of underground mixology bars where the music is low, the patrons don’t speak, and the mixologists perform strange magic with infusions and tinctures. Around 5AM I simply couldn’t walk anymore and found myself curled up on the couch in Carlton’s suite showing him photographs of my family members on my laptop. My phone was dead, I couldn’t figure out how to get back to my hotel, and I had to be at a meeting in 4 1/2 hours, and…

…next thing I knew a phone was ringing, it was 8:30AM, and I hear Carlton saying: “I hope I earn brownie points for giving you the duvet and freezing to death all night long.”

Ehh? Moments clanged by as I foggily realized that

a) I was in Manhattan

b) I was on a couch

c) I was still fully dressed in last night’s clothes, and

d) I’d have to wear them to a series of the most important meetings in my life

PLUS BONUS e) I’d only gotten 3 hours of sleep in the past three days.

Sweet!

Further domestic undertones ensued once I managed to free myself from the bowels of the couch. I staggered like a zombie to the shower as Carlton (who is, from the perspective of a woman oft mistaken for his wife, 1000% marriage material and the wife should count herself lucky) got back on the phone and ordered me coffee, a pastry basket and fresh fruit. Then I banished him to another room so I could slap on some makeup. He bustled around tying his tie and so forth while I tried to come to grips with the fact that I was wearing my night-time going-out clothes (red knee-high ultra-suede boots, black stockings and a very small black dress) into the inner sanctums of several publishing houses. Before noon.

Finally I decided “Screw it. Start as you mean to go on.”

“Atta girl,” said Carlton.

Off he went to tour Ian Schraeger’s new $10 million condos. Off I went to woo the publishers. And then to lunch at Blue Water…and then to the W Lounge at Bryant Park…and then and then–oh, there’s so much I can’t even track it.

New York is amazing.

(Except for that club whadyacallit? Tenjune. The one where Britney Spears puked or whatever. Total ghetto. Four-foot dudes w/ jeri-curls, girls twice as tall and thrice as wide, and a meathead bouncer clearly suffering from small-penis syndrome. Don’t go there. Not worth the cab fare.)

But other than that…I’ll take another bite of the Big Apple whenever and however I can get it. And hopefully I won’t have to wait too long.